Seeing the cornucopia spread out in front of me, my friend Suellen Elm-McGrath was surprised this haul came from one visit to the Fort Bragg Food Bank.
“You have to tell me the secret time to go to the Food Bank to score the really good stuff,” she joked.
But myself and Food Bank volunteer John Teller, who I had drafted to take the photo, told her this was the “normal” haul.
“I went on Thursday afternoon, which I figured to be the time to get a truly average bag to write about,” I said.
“This is pretty much what we give out every day,” Teller confirmed.
As part of he newspapers annual Food Bank series last year, I took home the turkey dinner, which was truly spectacular. That meal (being given out again today) filled three bags. It comes with all the trimmings and is an effort by several local businesses and community groups to give spectacular holiday meals to Food Bank clients for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
With so many more people at the Food Bank this year, I decided to go with a normal weekly food bag. Normal, of course, is relative and constantly in flux, especially at the Food Bank.
Eating with the clients at the Food Bank as part of writing this annual series has been an eye-opener as to why our society, including me, eats such unhealthy food.
A big change at the Food Bank is how much healthier the food has become. Much of the good food everybody has been getting comes from a bad — and bizarre — source. Six global conglomerates (which control 80 percent of the world”s vitamin market) were forced to repay $225 million in illegally jacked up food prices from 1989 to 1999. That money went to food banks to buy nutritious foods over the course of three years.
“With this settlement grant money we are able to offer our clients one (sometimes two) of the following items when they pick up food every week (brown rice, lentils, split peas, black beans, garbanzo beans, 16-bean soup-mix, etc.),” said Fort Bragg Food Bank Executive Director Nancy Severy.
“The brown rice and 16-bean soup seem to be particularly well-received,” she said.
I have noticed the clients slowly catching onto the healthier food. I myself wouldn”t normally purchase items like probiotic soy yogurt and veggie burgers and had to force myself to eat them.
The strawberry soy yogurt had a consistency and undertaste unfamiliar to me. But I”ll try it again and be better for it.
Why we choose the foods we do is a fascinating and often disturbing social science.
Recent studies have linked the rapid increase in obesity, especially among children, to increasingly sophisticated advertising for unhealthy products. Sixty percent of adults and 17 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds are now obese.
U.S. Internet, television, radio advertising and even grocery store placement steers society, children, toward high-profit unhealthy foods like soda pop, sugar cereal, potato chips and ice cream.
With no sales pitch involved, the Food Bank eating experience is something unlike this “normal.” Clients are offered five or six stations along a long bar, where each is given an either-or choice. That”s a throwback to times when food choices were narrower, less coerced and healthier.
A United Nations report documents how poverty is the leading cause of poor nutrition, which in turn creates huge costs to society in lost worker productivity, higher health care costs and even crime. Poor nutrition gets worse in a recession, resulting in a downward spiral with a big negative impact for the world”s economy.
The Food Bank is doing its best to reverse this trend, but tries to be cognizant of wants, as well as needs.
“We are delighted to receive all kinds of food donations. Our clients certainly enjoy sweets and snacks as much as the rest of us and we are happy to provide these to our clients when they are donated to us,” said Severy.
“However, when our driver goes to Santa Rosa weekly to pick up donated food at the Redwood Empire Food Bank, we make every effort to choose nutritious foods over less healthy ones.”
The veggie burger I got was an ad man”s nightmare, brown-grey in color, with no packaging of any kind. Lacking instructions, I fried it like a burger and found it tasted much better than it looked, crisp and chewy, much more juicy and flavorful than the old tofu burgers.
Much more handsome were the 3-pound giant red tomato and tiny pumpkin, which was about the same size. We all got as many onions and potatoes we could carry last Thursday.
While local grocery stores have always given a lot of produce, I wanted to find out why the Food Bank”s selection has improved and become fresher.
“We are able to acquire quite a bit of donated fresh produce at the Redwood Empire Food Bank through the Farm-To-Family program sponsored by the California Association of Food Banks, of which we are a member. Most of it is in very good shape when we receive it. We favor produce that keeps well for several days, and that most of our clients will be familiar with and therefore more likely to use, such as potatoes, onions, carrots, oranges, etc.,” Severy said.
Stretching dollars
The new effort is one example of how the Food Bank stretches donated dollars.
“Currently we are paying a nominal fee (3 cents per pound) for this produce, and of course, our cost to transport it. The acquisition of this Farm-to-Family produce is an example of one way the Food Bank spends money donated to us. While sometimes it makes sense to purchase food directly at wholesale prices — more often than not we can stretch those dollars and acquire more food for the buck by finding sources of donated food and transporting them to the Food Bank — even taking into consideration the driver and vehicle costs,” Severy said.
Breads are in short supply this year, which is a change for the worse. The only bread I felt comfortable taking was a hard Costeaux Bakery French bread loaf that seemed more like a prop from a Three Stooges movie than dinner.
I also got some canned green beans, chunky chili, chicken and wild rice Progresso soup, a big can of tunafish, a half-gallon of orange juice, two bags of sunflower seeds and a big tub of Activia.
Despite my own anti-marketing tirades, I had to admit the stuff I brought home was healthier and came with fewer of those brand names we are all brainwashed to buy.
I got brown rice at the Food Bank last year and have been eating it ever since, buying it in bulk at Harvest. Brown rice comes with one of history”s most important “Food Bank” parables. In ancient China, the rich took the polished white rice, while the poor ate the more nutritious brown rice and became stronger and healthier.
Along with breads, the Food Bank is short on volunteers for its “normal” days. Illnesses and the bigger crowds have left the staff and volunteers overworked and short-handed.
Season of Sharing
The purpose of the Advocate-News and The Mendocino Beacon”s annual Season of Sharing fund drive is to raise money the Food Bank can use year-round.
This year”s target is an ambitious $36,000, which would bring the total raised since our first fund drive in 1995 to just over $200,000.
The Community Foundation of Mendocino County administers the Season of Sharing free of charge as a courtesy to the newspapers. Every cent received goes to the Food Bank.
Checks should be addressed to the Community Foundation of Mendocino County (CFMC), and mailed to the newspaper at P.O. Box 1188, Fort Bragg, 95437, or dropped by our office, located at 450 N. Franklin St., Fort Bragg.
If you have any questions about the fund drive, call us at 964-5642. The fund drive began Nov. 12 and will end Dec. 31.
Season of Sharing has raised $6,180 to date. Our sincerest thanks to Boyd and Mary Kay Hight, David and Laura Welter, Ronald and Susan Munson, Tracy Barrett, Joe and Myra Figueiredo, Joseph Duvivier and Joan Kennedy White, Susan Larkin and James Ehlers, In Memory of Fred and Nonie Grass, Jack Rappaport, Laurie Maitre, Angela Speck, Sueann and Robert Horvat, Edwin and Theresa Branscomb, Marta MacKenzie, Jane Vartanian, Donna Feiner, Elizabeth Owings, Julee and Tom Estes, the Mendocino Coast Gem and Mineral Society, Andrew Klacik and two anonymous donors.
We gratefully acknowledge each week”s donors by printing their names in the newspapers, unless they ask to remain anonymous.
